Please enjoy this 1-minute video (for those receiving this by email: please click on the blog title line above to view. Don’t feel bad if you find Medicare confusing the first time you become eligible and it is time to enroll during your Initial Enrollment period. Enrollment is confusing for everyone the first time (and […]
Archive | 55 & younger
What’s the AIM of both investing and planning?
The aim of retirement planning while working is to accumulate shares. The aim of retirement planning once retired is to conserve shares! Both working or retired, the aim is share management! The value of each share goes up and down over time. Shares are the store of wealth. Dollars are simply a measure of spending […]
What is a Retirement Feasibility Timeline?
I define the Retirement Feasibility Timeline as a method to depict the transition between the working years (accumulation) and the retirement years (decumulation). You can visually see year by year (age by age) when retirement may be feasible without any changes to what you’re presently doing, and what meaningful changes may alter that outcome to […]
The Insidious Impact of Lifestyle Creep
What Goes Up, Must Come Down What is “Lifestyle Creep?” “Lifestyle creep occurs when an individual’s standard of living improves as their discretionary income rises and former luxuries become new necessities. The rise in discretionary income can happen either through an increase in income or decrease in costs.” Lifestyle creep can occur when your young when […]
Journalism 101 Meets Personal Finance 101
Most people invest willy-nilly (without any planning or order). Taking some basics from journalism may help most people get better results (expectations) when they approach investing. Answers to questions about Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? “…are questions whose answers are considered basic in information gathering or problem solving.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws . They’re very fundamental […]
The true source and cost of delaying savings
What is the true source for the cost of delayed savings, or the cost of waiting? Most articles focus on the lost dollars, which is true. But why are those dollars lost? Please read the insert below (and a link to the post in case those who get these by email can’t access the embedded […]
You’ve heard of the “1 percenters” – what percenter are you?
You can get a sense of what “percenter” you are through a handy site that summarizes income or wealth (and other stuff too) called Shnugi. The numbers are based off of the results of the Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve. There are two measures that people often confuse being similar. Income and […]
Is Robo-Advising the way of the future?
What is Robo-Advising? From Widipedia: “Legally, the term “financial advisor” applies to any entity giving advice about securities. But most robo-advisors limit themselves to providing portfolio management (i.e. allocating investments among asset classes) without addressing issues such as estate and retirement planning and cash-flow management, which are also the domain of financial planning.” So, notice […]
Social Security as Longevity Insurance
Most people look at the benefits they would receive today when making their decision about when to begin receiving their Social Security. They also underestimate how long they may live unless they already have medical issues that are known to reduce longevity. These two impulses cause many couples to begin their benefits too early which […]
A Simple Retirement Income Process
Working or retired, the focus of most people is keeping their check book full of money for the monthly expenses they have. While working, the source of the money is obvious … it is from you working. While retired, the source of the money is less obvious … it is from your money working. So […]